abolition of slavery in the Americas Similar patterns unfolded elsewhere, as imperial laws intended to place limits on slavery and the slave trade met stiff resistance by slave owners in the colonies Overall, such laws originated in national governments’ responses to mounting domestic and international opposition to chattel slavery and the actions of slaves themselves and their many forms of resistance to the fact and terms of their enslavement A survey of the British, French, and Spanish colonial empires highlights these broad patterns GREAT BRITAIN In Britain the 1807 and 1811 laws were followed by the amelioration laws of 1823, meant to improve the living conditions of slaves Far more consequential was the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833, which went into effect on August 1, 1834 The 1833 law abolished slavery throughout the empire, while stipulating a period of apprenticeship in which slaves over the age of six would continue working for four years for their former masters A major slave rebellion in Jamaica in December 1831 (the “Christmas revolt”) played a major role in prompting Parliament to pass the 1833 law—an illustration of the role played by slaves in advancing their own emancipation In 1838, over the vociferous objections of slaveholders, Parliament proclaimed complete emancipation Upper and Lower Canada followed the same trajectory as British colonies elsewhere in the Americas, with final emancipation coming in 1838 For the next 27 years Canada would serve as a refuge for escaped slaves from the United States, especially after the U.S Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made no state in the Union immune from slave-catchers and bounty hunters In France, with the convening of the Estates General in 1789, the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of the Blacks) called for the abolition of the slave trade and emancipation of slaves within the colonies The call was rejected after a powerful coalition of white colonists successfully prevented debate on the topic With the eruption of the Haitian Revolution from 1791, the French assembly relinquished its jurisdiction over the question Three years later, in 1794, the Convention outlawed slavery throughout the empire and granted rights of citizenship to all adult males In 1801, Haitian rebel leader Toussaint Louverture, whose forces had just gained control of all of Hispaniola, promulgated a constitution that prohibited slavery in perpetuity throughout the island The following year, in 1802, Toussaint was captured and transported to France, and Napoleon I reinstituted slavery throughout the French colonies After France’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, in 1817 the French constitutional monarchy passed a law abolishing the slave trade by 1826 A few months after the overthrow of the monarchy and establishment of the Second Republic, and under the leadership of prominent abolitionist Victor Schoelcher, on April 27, 1848, France abolished slavery throughout the empire SPAIN In Spain the first effort to abolish slavery came soon after the overthrow of King ferdinand vii and during the tumult of the Napoleonic occupation, when in 1811 the Cortes (parliament) abolished slavery throughout the empire The law was largely ignored In 1820, following a major revolt against a restored constitutional monarchy, the Cortes abolished the slave trade while leaving slavery itself intact—though after the independence of Latin America in the early 1820s, Spain’s American empire had been reduced to one major colony: Cuba Abolitionist sentiment within Cuba mounted through the first half of the century, despite the colonial government’s success in crushing organized antislavery agitation In 1865, in the wake of the U.S Civil War, the Spanish Abolitionist Society was founded, its considerable influence rooted in mounting opposition to the constitutional monarchy In 1868 a liberal revolution triumphed in Spain, its leaders advancing as one of their principal aims the abolition of slavery in Cuba In July 1870 the Cortes passed the Moret Law, which emancipated children born to slaves after 1868 and slaves age 60 and older Envisioned as a form of gradual abolition, the law’s provisions were undermined by both planters and slaves Planters sought to delay the law’s implementation and subvert its provisions, while slaves pushed its boundaries in the effort to secure their freedom The Ten Years’ War on the eastern half of the island complicated the situation even further Finally, on October 7, 1886, the Spanish government eliminated various legal categories of quasi slavery and abolished slavery throughout the island A brief summary of other European nations’ abolition laws once again highlights the partial and uneven nature of the process of emancipation Sweden abolished the slave trade in 1813 and slavery in its colonies in 1843 In 1814 the Netherlands outlawed the slave trade and, nearly half a century later in 1863, abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies In 1819 Portugal outlawed the slave trade north of the equator and in 1858